Managing stress
Unless you are a sociopath or happen to work in a very well-paying role that comes with no challenges, the chances are you probably feel stress on a regular basis. I do and as I mentioned in an earlier blog post on work-place stress, it often originates from things that shouldn’t cause stress. In that post I argued that the solution was to establish control over the areas that could be controlled and leave the rest to fate. Today’s post is different, and I want to discuss ways I use to lower levels of everyday stress. I am talking about small wins that individually may only be worthy of a shrug of the shoulders, but cumulatively are beneficial to health and allow us to limit our body’s stress-responses to bigger events.
I love a good framework that I make up on the spot. These are often much better ideas than those I have properly considered for much longer. Here is my one for today: distract, defer, demote, diversify and delegate/share. As you can see, I wanted them all to begin with d, but the last one is a bit more nuanced than that.
Distract is one of the easiest techniques, but it has its limitations. A good example of this for me is taking the NY subway to work in the morning. It’s been years since I was dependent on the Tube in London. I remember that the biggest cause of low-level stress came from weighing up whether it was worth fighting to get on a congested train or waiting for another one with a rising fear of being late for work. This wasn’t a problem in Hong Kong and Singapore as the metro systems were regular with orderly lines of stress-free passengers. The NY subway feels like a return to my working life 24 years ago and the same low level of stress has returned. The secret is the same trick I learned all those years ago. Get a good book and use the power of distraction to focus your attention on something else. I have found that the simple action of being immersed in a book renders me completely indifferent as to whether I get on the first train or wait for a second train. If you can relieve the stress this way you often find that the worst scenario in your mind, being late, rarely materializes. Once I have boarded, I stand in the middle away from the doors so that no one needs to push past me. I am alone with my book and my biggest risk is missing my stop, which I have done three times in the last 11 months. You can choose your preferred distraction which may include audio books, podcasts, newspapers, games and magazines. The limitations are that sometimes the stress from work is at the front of my mind and I can’t immerse myself fully and I need to re-read whole chapters. So, this method works against low-level stress and annoyance, but isn’t effective against bigger problems.
Defer is an interesting tactic. I feel that it works best when an issue is dependent on an event in the future or where you want to create space in your mind to get a good night’s sleep. If you know that an issue causing stress needs a specific input from somewhere else and you have done everything else possible to prepare, then you can usually tell your brain to stop worrying until you receive that input. Most of the time my brain will concur, and the stress is limited to walking through the stages to make sure I am prepared. At night or at the end of work, the simple action of writing a list of tasks you need to achieve the next day is usually sufficient to allow my brain to switch off. In both cases we are deferring the work to a later date and encouraging and giving our brains permission to stop thinking about them until that time.
Demote is another way of describing the act of putting things in perspective. Everything seems important in the moment, but is it really? It may just be important to the person raising the issue as they want to turn their attention to something else. Asking what would happen if you didn’t tackle an issue often results in the answer “nothing”. Alternatively, it may create an issue, but that issue is either less significant than dropping the ball on another project or far enough in the future that you can organize yourself to tackle that problem at the appropriate time. Unfortunately, there are few prizes for solving a problem before anyone else is thinking about it. But if you solve a problem as people become aware of it and before it becomes an issue then you are probably working at your most effective. Assessing and demoting a problem isn’t negligent provided you afford the issue the appropriate amount of thought and action depending on its severity or potential impact.
Diversify is an attempt to make yourself less exposed to one specific issue. Companies do this all the time to manage risk and maintain relevancy. It’s the same for us as we manage our careers. As your industry changes, ensuring that you aren’t only working on a product line that is nearing the end of its lifecycle will manage your levels of stress as you will feel a bit more security to do your best work. It’s frequently mentioned that having multiple managers can be challenging, particularly if their requirements are not aligned. I think this can be wrong-headed as we usually have multiple stakeholders even if they aren’t officially directing our workload. It is one of the primary objectives of senior leadership to clarify the strategic priorities for the organization and this should help bring competing agendas into alignment. Once you are in this position, serving multiple managers and stakeholders should increase your profile and reduce the risk of being dependent on one person’s opinion. It also offers you the opportunity to explore new areas that may be of interest to you.
Delegate/share is when you lean on a partner or good friend to share the burden of your stress. I am the worst offender at this as I feel the need to solve problems and not worry other people, but it is true that a problem shared is a problem halved. Just having the perspective of another person can help to provide balance and filter out some of the unhelpful negative thoughts you might be having, and it also offers different perspectives on an issue. At the serious end of the spectrum, organizations are usually vulnerable to external events or human mistakes. When you first learn of something that hasn’t worked or is going to become a problem, aside from determining what has happened, what could have prevented it and what are the range of solutions, we also need to ask who should be informed. It’s usually not a pleasant task to share bad news, but it can help sharpen minds on solutions and free up company resources. If you are the one proposing a specific path, having approval from key stakeholders shares the risk and avoids the appearance of you acting in a secretive manner or going rogue.
As my career advances it becomes less about learning to do something well and then repeating that action, and more about managing problems, setting priorities and using the expertise around me to drive the best results possible. Stress isn’t the sudden realization that the thing I do well is no longer working. Stress is a constant and is attached to every decision or action. Managing that stress is essential. The aim is that it only appears in a healthy way, doesn’t prevent me from being effective and doing my best work and doesn’t detract from my enjoyment of work and life in general. There will be times when it breaks through into something less healthy and less helpful, but by managing the low levels of constant stress I am better prepared to deal with it when it does.
In previous blog posts I have covered how to interview and tips on creating a resume. To complete the trilogy, next week’s blog is on being interviewed.